A Book and Blog about Life

The Day I was Inches from a Nuclear Missile and Rambling Philosophical Babble…

Well, truth is, it was a decommissioned nuclear missile – a Cold War era ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile). I actually took the photo below! It’s one of my favorite photos ever.

In about 2002, I was visiting Arizona. I had already went to the Grand Canyon, and Phoenix to meet a friend of mine for New Year’s, then I made my way over to Tucson, Arizona. No particular reason. Only because I’d never been there. I had no clue what was there or if anything interesting would be found. Well, I discovered a couple super cool things in Tucson! First was this decommissioned nuclear missile site. It was run by some retired military officers who kept this former missile bunker site open as a museum. I took a tour down below where they actually worked when it was live! It was pretty cool.

The technology is laughable compared to today. In fact, I heard recently that America’s nuclear missiles are STILL mostly controlled and managed by an archaic computer system utilizing 360 floppy disk drives! Shit! I had that on my first IBM PC computer before I was a teenager in the early 80s! Holy cow! I thought. But, the good news is that it won’t be hacked by some North Korean, Russian, or ISIS cyber-terrorist. There’s always a bright side.

After taking the tour of the ICBM site, I went to one of the largest military airplane museums in the world. I saw all kinds of bad-ass retired military jets and helicopters. Below was my favorite – the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. The SR-71 was the world’s fastest airplane, used for reconnaissance missions during the Cold War. It flew mach 3 – or 3 times the speed of sound – over 2,300 miles per hour! The design is simply awesome!

Seems like eons ago, when our biggest cold-war adversary incinerating us in an atomic pissing contest seemed as bad as things could ever get. Who knew things can always get worse than global thermonuclear annihilation?! The Cold War was civilized at least, and strategies were constructed upon mostly logical suppositions.

The 20th century was defined by two massive global wars, setting up for a prolonged philosophical stalemate between capitalism and individualism, against structural “equality” and communist – the Cold War – ultimately ushering in détente, as the philosophical nuclear pissing contest was finally won by the West, after decades of ebb and flow.

This new century, this new millennium, will also be defined by a confrontation of ideas – philosophies.

This 21st century will be defined by religious philosophy and individualism versus secularism and institutionalism: East vs West. West vs West. Capitalism vs itself.

Two things won’t exist by the end of this century: capitalism, and true religious freedom, globally.

Capitalism will surely self-destruct, very similar to communism, but in a far more spectacular way. It will be a once in mankind’s history of civilization kind of moment. And in the dusty aftermath, the failure of both centrally managed leftist populism and the epic failure of individualism and free markets of the right, will usher in a new era of government, highly intolerant toward uncontrained individualism and all religion – partly due to the war on Islam – but generally far less democratic, global in reach, and absolute in power. Religious freedom will be nothing more than lip service.

Let’s call it the century, perhaps millenium, of Institutionalism. Government not by the people, but rather superceded by a power base of global institutions. The destruction of capitalism, brought about due to the very institutions of power, will lead to greater authority and expansion of these same institutions. “They didn’t have enough power to prevent the catastrophe” will be the excuse.

Global leadership by the elite 0.1% will finally be realized, what elite “progressives” and those in power would call limited democracy by The intellectual class. Hillary Clinton’s wet dream.

They will finally dictate what is best for society. A new form of monarchy, the right to govern based on birthright – intellectual birthright – not genetic lineage.

I know, impossible, right? Just watch. Mankind’s “progress” is unstoppable. It can only be slowed or detoured for brief moments. It’s not fate. It’s still free will, just probabilistic free will that always converges at a known end point, with the only variable being when.

After all this time, I finally realized what “God” is doing with all of this. It’s just a damn experiment, a well designed and constructed lab experiment. It was never about saving souls or eternal life. I guess we can’t blame God for being curious, can we?